196 JOURNEY FROM For ourselves, we are content to believe that the plant laserpitium, or silphium, was really sold, or rather bartered, at Charax, as well as the liquor which was extracted from it. We will however agree with Signor Della Celia in deferring any further remarks on the silphium till we find ourselves in the country which produced it ; and will in the mean time proceed with our journey along the shores of the Syrtis.

Soon after passing the several mounds which we have suggested as the probable remains of Charax, we arrived at the wells of Hudia ; a name which the Arabs suppose to have been given to this place in consequence of the bad water usually found there, and which they consider to be only fit for Jews ; the Arab term for a Jew being Hudi, and the Jews themselves little esteemed by Mahometans.

We will not however venture to attribute this origin to the term by which the place is distinguished, although it is by no means improbable that the name may have a reference to the persecuted people who are here so contemptuously alluded to. We know that the Jews were formerly very numerous in the Pentapolis, and we find them described by Procopius as having once inhabited the country on its western extremity *. Hudia may in such case be the last settlement they possessed in this neighbourhood, and the place may very probably have received its appellation from that circumstance.

There being no other resting-place at less than a whole day’s journey from Hudia, we pitched our tents for the night near the • De iEdificiis, lib. v. p. 110-li. Par. fol. 1663.